Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for March 06, 2014

Ancient Romans: It speeds the process up. The food goes through both ends without having to move. No wonder the Romans usually reclined…

Thomas Ava Edison’s (1847-1931) first successful light bulb shone for 13½ hours.

Take THAT, corkscrew bulbs!

Phoebus cartel…..

you can see the bulb on its own webcam

I’ve read about the firehouse light bulb; the fact that the bulb has been working for over a century is truly amazing.

So, I guess it would take about 1000 Darkling Beetles to make a plastic spoon.

But why did they put the toilet in the kitchen? My toilet is almost in the kitchen, but there’s a wall in between.

Ah, the good ol’ days before consumerism when products would last a long time.

Up until the early ‘70s, Detroit Edison would replace burned out light bulbs free when they were given the the burned out bulbs in exchange. Other manufacturers of bulbs complained that they couldn’t make money and took DetEd to court. DetEd fought it and lost. DetEd explained to consumers that it was not their choice. Seems like not all corporations are evil.

Agreed. Thats the first thing that came to mind. With all the earthquakes and such.

Eat on the go! LOL!

We had the same deal in Chicago in the 30s. Free bulbs if you turned the burned-out ones in.

Apparently so! Not EVERY storm knocks out the power!!!

True, that! Now, EVERYBODY has to buy the “corkscrews” because the old bulbs are no longer manufactured!

No – just that every time it came back on, the bulb lit up.

xrilander: Likely backup power for some of that period, but the “story” is that the bulb still works.

A bulb is rated for both voltage and wattage. IOW, 100 watts and 115 volts. A bulb run at a higher voltage will produce significantly more light, but for a much shorter time. One run at a somewhat lower voltage will produce less light, but bulb life increases considerably. “Standardization” probably was pretty iffy in 1901, too.

When my parents built this house in 1960, we found that our line voltage was a tad high, so I asked my mom to pick up some 130V bulbs. Local lighting dealers (she’s spent a lot of time with one while building the house) had or could get ’em.

Mom came home with some 100W bulbs rated for 230Volts!

I wasn’t driving yet then, but should have gone with her. IAC, when we stopped laughing (they were about 20 W at 130V), I stuck one in the garage door operator, which tended to be lit 14+ hours a day. When my wife and I moved in with mom in 2009, the bulb finally gave out a little later.

Plenty of light for a garage “find the back door” light….

Nikola Tesla was the real inventor. A true genius unlike Edison. Edison didn’t even invent the light bulb, he only perfected the idea that was already thought out by 22 other men. You couldn’t even call him an inventor, he was more of a businessman; he simply hired people to invent things for him.